Employee Misconduct

A bookkeeper pleaded guilty to embezzling $6.9 million to pay for such things as a ranch in Vermont, a life-size statue of Al Capone and a private performance by singer Burt Bacharach, federal authorities said. Angela Buckborough Platt, 43, pocketed the money over six years while an accountant for J & J Materials Corp. in Rehoboth, federal prosecutors said. Under the plea deal, Platt must pay back all of the money and prosecutors will recommend a prison sentence.

A Pentagon official who was a prime architect of Bush administration policies that led to the Iraq war presented policymakers with allegations of links between Iraq and Al Qaeda that did not accurately reflect the views of U.S. intelligence agencies, according to a Defense Department investigation disclosed Thursday by a senior Senate Democrat. The report concluded that the official's actions were inappropriate, Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) said.

A former radiologist at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center pleaded guilty Wednesday to one count of failing to pay state taxes in 2004, when he was billing the county for marathon shifts at the troubled public hospital. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge David Horwitz sentenced Dr. Harold A. Tate, 47, to three years' probation and ordered him to pay back taxes of $35,138 and a $10,000 fine. Dist. Atty.

An elementary school aide was arrested Thursday after allegedly showing sexually graphic pictures to fifth- and sixth-graders on school computers and his cellphone, police said. Homero Martinez, 31, of Santa Ana was booked into the Orange County Jail on $20,000 bail. Tynes Elementary School has placed him on administrative leave. Saddleback High School in Santa Ana, where he coached varsity softball, fired him, police said.

A former Riverside County Fire Department manager accused of working with a colleague to embezzle about $1 million in cash and equipment pleaded not guilty Wednesday to all charges. Authorities say that in a four- to five-year period ending in January 2005, fire communications manager Michael A. Burton and one of his employees, Steven Vaughn, developed elaborate schemes and serpentine paper trails to siphon cash and pay for vacations and home furnishings.

A former supervisor at the Department of Homeland Security pleaded guilty in Alexandria to accepting at least $600,000 in bribes for fraudulent citizenship documents to hundreds of Asian immigrants. Robert T. Schofield, 57, who once supervised as many as 50 employees in the Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Fairfax, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to bribery and to aiding and abetting the illegal procurement of citizenship.

An off-duty U.S. Border Patrol agent was jailed for more than a day after Mexican border officials found 650 rounds of ammunition in his car. The unidentified agent was arrested Thursday as he entered Mexico at the San Luis Port of Entry in southwest Arizona, and was released late Friday and returned to the United States. The agent was assigned to the Yuma sector.

A 56-year-old former Homeland Security Department press aide was sentenced in Bartow to five years in prison after he pleaded no contest to sending sexually explicit Internet messages to someone he thought was a 14-year-old girl. The recipient was an online character created by detectives. Brian J. Doyle, who resigned shortly after his April 4 arrest, also will have to serve 10 years of probation and register as a sex offender. "I am profoundly sorry for everything.

By ousting KB Home chief Bruce Karatz over inflated stock option awards, the Los Angeles company's board instantly made the executive a high-profile potential target for federal prosecutors, legal experts say. More than 50 corporate officers nationwide have resigned or been fired in the continuing scandal over alleged option manipulation, but most of those have been at relatively small companies.

Former Hewlett-Packard Co. Chairwoman Patricia Dunn is scheduled to arraigned today on charges that she directed an illegal investigation into news leaks at the computer maker. Dunn's hearing in state court in San Jose was moved up two days, said Tom Dresslar, a spokesman for California Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer. Lockyer brought felony charges last month against Dunn, 53, and four others, accusing them of using illegal tactics to monitor the phone calls of board members and journalists.